For a good view of what’s new in 2 check out Joel “jaykul” Bennett’s excellent slide deck here

To add to the mammoth PowerShell support included in Windows 7, the Windows 7 Resource Kit also includes a PowerShell Pack which adds 10 modules to help supercharge your Windows PowerShell scripting:

WPK - Create rich user interfaces quick and easily from Windows PowerShell. Think HTA, but easy. Over 600 scripts to help you build quick user interfaces
TaskScheduler - List scheduled tasks, create or delete tasks
FileSystem - Monitor files and folders, check for duplicate files, and check disk space
IsePack – Supercharge your scripting in the Integrated Scripting Environment with over 35 shortcuts
DotNet – Explore loaded types, find commands that can work with a type, and explore how you can use PowerShell, DotNet and COM together
PSImageTools - Convert, rotate, scale, and crop images and get image metadata
PSRSS – Harness the FeedStore from PowerShell
PSSystemTools – Get Operating System or Hardware Information
PSUserTools – Get the users on a system, check for elevation, and start-processaadministrator
PSCodeGen -Generates PowerShell scripts, C# code, and P/Invoke

This is all well and good, but what about the other Microsoft Operating Systems? Well, now Microsoft have released the Windows Management Framework, which includes PowerShell 2.0, WinRM 2.0 and BITS 4.0 providing the same rich experience of PowerShell 2.0 for Vista, Server 2003 & 2008 and Windows XP.

Looks to me like Microsoft just super-sized my PowerShell options :-)

A couple of years later, and PowerShell has become way more pervasive and is going to continue to get more and more penetration into our daily IT infrastructure – Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are excellent examples of how this is going to accelerate PowerShell’s visibility and wider use.

I’m thinking that the PowerShell Toolbox page is in desperate need of an update. So, over the next week or so I’ll go through and give it a spring clean and add new popular tools to it.

If you’re intersted, feel free to drop a comment here listing your favourites, and I’ll make sure they get added to the page.

If you feel I’ve omitted someone please drop me a comment. For details check the PowerShell Toolbox

This gives you a great insight into what can be done with PowerGUI and has given me a few ideas of my own ;)

Well done Kirk, and thanks to Dmitry for pointing it out!

I tried to download them yesterday, and was prompted for my Credit Card details, so I cancelled the transaction. After having a look today, things went a lot smoother. So smooth in fact that I managed to navigate through the whole transaction without actually getting the product! Apparently I managed to not provide any information and received an Order number:

The order data has been sent to our order desk. Your order confirmation number is ****** . Please save this number for future reference.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. Seeing as they don’t have my email address or any other information it would appear I managed to glide through the process too easily. ;)

To be fair I think the process allowed me to progress without providing any Shipping information, as it had a tick box for “same as billing information”.

I’ve since stepped through the process again, but provided details under the shipping page, so I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, well done to /n Software for lettings us play with their product. Something else to add to my To Do list!

I’ve been hearing good things about PowerShell Plus for a while now, most recently from Richard. It’s definitely on my list of things to play with. I just need to find more play time!!

You may recall that I got to see a demo of SpecOps Command, and had access to an early preview. Unfortunately I didn’t get past installing it to really have a play. I believe this application is really going to have a big impact on PowerShell, and it would appear Jeffrey is of the same opinion! Well done to Magnus, Thorbjorn and everyone at SpecOps for going RTM.

When I started this blog, I kept the default theme from WordPress, with the view of worrying about the content rather than the look. Most people seem to read the content via RSS, so that’s been fine. I’m not going to change the focus, but I’m going to revamp the website, update the toolbox and example code and generally give everything an uplift for the New Year.

I’m also aware that posts have lacked the technical content that I want them to have lately. So over the next few weeks I plan on getting a lot more interesting posts up.

Watch this space ;)

Apologies for the poor homage. I couldn’t help myself ;)

This situation is very similar to when the Windows Installer (MSI) technology first came on to the scene around 2000-2001, and anyone authoring setup software was dealing with how to get it out into their environments. Everyone was including the redistributable with their software in case the machine it was going to be installed on didn’t have it in place already.

The complexity with PowerShell however is that there are two questions that need to be dealt with:1) Like MSI, how do you deploy PowerShell out in your environment? and 2) How do you manage your PowerShell landscape of Snappins?

I was lucky enough see an online demo from Magnus and Thorbjorn from Special Operations Software today. They have a new product expected to be announced at TechEd later this month, called SpecOps Command which I believe will deal with these questions, for starters.

SpecOps Command, seems to be a tightly integrated product between Group Policy and PowerShell. This combination has the ability to provide it with the best of both products: the ease and flexibility of PowerShell, and the centralised environment management of Group Policy.

The tool has loads of cool features including the ability to run PoSH scripts assigned in GPO’s, Undo scripts for when things fall out of scope, reporting, and the ability to target clients in a very granular manner e.g. Only apply to Dell machines running Windows XP.

Thorbjorn advised that SpecOps intend to release a couple of versions of Command, including a free version that should provide the core functionality including the abilty to distribute PowerShell out into your environment.

I think it’s great that ISV’s like Quest and SpecOps are adding value to the PowerShell community with free offerings, as well as their commercial products. It give them exposure to their intended market, and provides us with some cool tools to make life easier :)

Like Quest’s AD Cmdlet’s I think SpecOps Command is likely to have a big impact on the way we use PowerShell going forwards.

[Update 2 Nov]
Magnus just gave me the link to the SpecOps website for Command. This will be the product page when it releases.

I’ve taken the original list from the post, plus the updates from the comments and combined them into a more comprehensive list on the page. I’ve also included a short description, and whether the product is free, commercial, open source etc.

If you have a tool, or know of a tool we’ve missed, let me know in the comments here (or the previous post), and I’ll update the page.

GPExpert™ Scripting Toolkit for PowerShell
PoshConsole
PowerShell Community Extensions
PowerGadgets
Quest’s PowerGUI
PowerLocker PowerPad
PowerShell Analyzer
ActiveRoles Management Shell for AD (aka Quest AD Cmdlets)
Zimbra PowerShell Cmdlets
SAPIEN PrimalScript 2007

What else is out there that I should add to the list? What tools do you have in your toolbox, and which ones are essential Vs nice-to-have?